Whenever I get the chance to meet with new customers locally in Singapore, I’ll try to tell them the history of our Tyre Pressure Gauge, how we ended up creating it.

so perhaps for the benefit of the overseas customers here it is…

basically back in 2005 when I started going for my first few trackdays in my Honda civic EG6, I would head into the local hardware store and pick up for myself a new tyre pressure gauge for about $15.

some gauges broke, 1 actually got flooded, 1 had a cracked face, cos it didnt come with a case, one didnt even survive the drive to the track, I’m not sure what it was, perhaps it was the vibration in the boot, but basically its needle was just hanging limp in the gauge.

At the track, I noticed the Porsche 996 Gt3 and Turbo owners had their own Porsche Tyre Pressure gauges. I knew I had to get one.

I ordered 10 units from a Porsche parts stockist, thinking that these would be an instant hit at the next trackday. I was so disappointed, among the 10 at least 4 were not accurate at all, the finish and assembly of the case was shoddy, the gauge felt flimsy in your hands, the velvet liner inside came off a few sets that I had to glue back on. The nozzle for the tyre pressure gauge didnt seem to hold the pressure very well so an accurate reading was not possible too.

The chrome case while it looked awesome in the pictures, it was perhaps unrealistic for a tyre pressure gauge, as it scratched and marked so easily. It was also flimsy and didnt look like it was made to take any kind of shock.

From a business stand point it was a failure, Porsche refused to accept back the 4 in-accurate gauges and saying it was technically not a broken or spoilt part. So I only had 6 left, that I could sell.

I took apart one of the Porsche gauges, and realised that its internal mechanisms was identical to one of the local hardware shop gauges, what a rip off! But having recognised those markings, I traced back to the gauge manufacturer and starting talking to them initially about just buying some gauges,

Later we realised that if we just spent abit more money on the internal mechanism of the Tyre Pressure Gauge, we would have a much better gauge.

so here it started! our own gauge! many many samples and mechanism types later… followed by real world testing at the race track, tossing it into the boot many times…

what about the gauge face? well some help from Azimuth Watches in the design element, we created our own Competition Tyres Tyre Pressure Gauge!